skydriller wrote:
Im not clueless.
Ive worked in several countries where the Military or Armed Police have roadblocks everywhere, and you need the right papers to move around or you are “detained” or arrested – and I have been “detained” due to a paperwork cockup (they didnt arrest foreigners as that looks bad for them if they have made the mistake), so I know what thats like too. It is the reason I posted of my experience being stopped here in France during Lockdown #1 – because the sensation of being stopped and asked for papers by Gendarmes was remarkably familiar to me…
Being stopped knowing that you can’t be arrested and being stopped by people entitled to kill you if you don’t present proper papers are two different levels. Comparing France today with Germany in 1930’s (I know that you haven’t done that) is complete BS.
skydriller wrote:
But a quick look at an airline schedule or even passing through any biggish airport shows things certainly arent back to normal.
Airports in Croatia are recording highest numbers ever… So obviously it’s different across Europe but I guess it slowly is returning to normal.
Graham wrote:
Putting the rights or wrongs to one side for a moment, it does raise an interesting question of what the end game is. If we accept two basic facts – 1) Covid is endemic and elimination is not possible, and 2) the point of vaccination (and de facto compulsory vaccination) is to reduce the overall impact of it – then under what circumstances would you remove the requirement for the pass sanitaire?
The way it was communicated in Switzerland was clearly that it is a temporary thing and will be abolished once the vaccination/recovered rate reaches a point where precautions are no longer neccessary. That goes for the requirement to show the pass in certain venues. Right now, the pass needs to be shown in places with a higher risk of infection, like indoor restaurants, cinemas, museums, theaters, gyms and indoor swimming pools for instance. As a consequence, mask regulations for these venues have been largely relaxed. It is not required or intended for schools, shops and public transport, where masks are still compulsory. Masks are no longer compulsory anywhere outside as long as a reasonable distancing can be observed and even indoors in certain environments, where distancing is possible and practicable.
It also has to be said clearly that the certificate/pass here does NOT show up front whether you are vaccinated or not, only that you are one of three: Vaccinated, recovered or tested. It CAN show your vaccination status, but that one is not regularly checked i.e. at restaurants or so, only for travel, because there are restrictions in certain countries which demand this.
My current experience is that as a consequence of the certificate, life has become almost back to normal. A lot of venues closed for a long time or under massive restrictions are now operating back to normal and people get more and more comfortable with the idea that they can do a lot of things normally again which for a long time have been either prohibited or the reason for concern.
So no, the intention is not to keep the pass indefinitly, at least not nationally. How long it will be used for travel is another story and I can only hope it will be AVAILABLE for as long as it is needed so those who need it for these purposes will have a means to use it.
The end game is 1-2 ppm deaths per day due to CV19, in addition to a similar historical number due to flu.
The media here has finally got bored with publishing the daily numbers, thankfully. The numbers are interesting (I posted them above) in that almost all of the deaths are among the unvacced. Unfortunately there is no lower limit to human stupidity and I’ve just had a talk from a hairdresser whose friends are mostly hard anti-vaccers, and two women who run a local cafe really do believe Bill Gates is behind all this (they are doubly stupid, being 60+ and in a customer facing position, but it is an open-air place so thus far they’ve got away with it) 
Foreign travel is now very feasible but few are doing it because they got used to not going anywhere. I think many pilots will chuck it all in pretty soon. Several fly-in regulars have dropped out in the last year…
Peter wrote:
Foreign travel is now very feasible but few are doing it because they got used to not going anywhere. I think many pilots will chuck it all in pretty soon. Several fly-in regulars have dropped out in the last year…
I think the main reason why people who usually travel don’t bother is the chaotic way regulation is implemented around different countries. If it was a clear and easy regulation which sais what you need across Europe, travelling would be back to normal p.d.q.
In a way the same thing in restaurants: lots of people simply got used not going there so it will be a while before they come back. However, since restaurants can operate almost normally with the certificate provision, lots of people have returned who before would not go. Clearly, there will be some who now will scream loudly that they “boycot” restaurants, but I can see quite a few starting back habits such as regular round tables which were suspended for the last year or more.
Peter wrote:
few are doing it because they got used to not going anywhere.
It is also probably because people from experience of the last 18 months expect that rules regarding traveling might (will) change anytime without any notice. US just announced that they will allow travelers from Europe but from beginning of November, they might decide otherwise before…
When I flew from Nice to Orly to collect my plane, and also a few days earlier when I dropped family off at Nice, it looks very much back to normal. In April Nice was down to one third of one terminal. Now both terminals are open again and absolutely packed with people. I can’t swear that numbers are back to pre-Covid, but it’s not far off.
As for people getting out of the habit of eating out – in Nice the restaurants were full as soon as they were allowed to be. I think people were very happy to be able to eat out again.
I won’t comment on the latest set of exchanges on this thread except to +1 “Unfortunately there is no lower limit to human stupidity”.
WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:
It is also probably because people from experience of the last 18 months expect that rules regarding traveling might (will) change anytime without any notice
.. and in such unpredictable ways. Grant Shapps is the UK minster for travel and has apparently decided that double vaccination with Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer counts as “double vaccination” for UK entry purposes, unless you got doubly vaccinated with Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer in Latin America, Africa, or Aisa when it doesn’t.
I always thought Shapps was a bit more sensible than the others, but I think he must have spent too much time near Boris Johnson :-)
It is more likely that he thinks those vacc certificates are likely to be fake, which is probably true, but he can’t say that openly
GA travel is a lot easier. IME you need to show the paper printout, and “the system” has decided that the fact that the UK or EU one can be photoshopped in 5 mins is not a significant issue. Actually it probably can’t be photoshopped in 5 mins because
The problem is with a departure country which doesn’t produce such a certificate.
DavidS wrote:
Grant Shapps is the UK minster for travel and has apparently decided that double vaccination with Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer counts as “double vaccination” for UK entry purposes, unless you got doubly vaccinated with Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer in Latin America, Africa, or Aisa when it doesn’t.I always thought Shapps was a bit more sensible than the others, but I think he must have spent too much time near Boris Johnson :-)
I don’t know the details but I can see clear reasons why that position might be taken.
In operating such a policy of recognition one does not just consider the vaccines themselves, but the likely credibility of the proof of vaccination one is presented with. One is naturally going to be more skeptical of the ‘proof’ from countries where vaccine supply is limited and low-level corruption endemic, the incentive to forge such proof being that much greater.
My own recent experience (entering Ireland earlier this week for a one-day business trip) was that proof of vaccination is open to the most basic fraud. There was no check at all upon entering Ireland and the only check was by disinterested gate staff at Birmingham airport. I had my NHS vaccination cert printed out, and I had only unfolded it far enough for them to see the NHS logo before they looked up to the next passenger and waved me on. No scanning of the barcode, no checking my name against my passport, nothing. I could easily have created my own if I didn’t have one.
The point is hardly any Europeans (except perhaps a hardcore of anti-vaxxers) are going to bother defrauding this because they’re either already vaccinated or can easily get vaccinated. But when it comes to other countries where vaccines are more hard to come by, it’s likely to be a bit different. Someone way back (many, many pages ago) said that thankfully in most cases the jab itself was more important than the proof of having one, but this won’t be the case everywhere.
